Month: March 2015

In February we welcomed Christo Wallers, a film maker based in Northumberland, to the team of artists working on the Dispatches from the Source project.

This is Christo’s proposal for a 16mm film project in response to a conversation about the ideas we have been exploring so far around source materials. I had also recently discovered that the deep groundwater that feeds the source of Tweed also feeds the sources of Annan and Clyde.

This film project plays upon the shortcomings of primary source material. As you mentioned, the source of a river’s water is impossible to isolate, due to the plurality of sources of water that feed into a spot which is in itself only labelled as the ‘source’ because of a general agreement, as opposed to an empirically provable location. The source of the river’s water becomes a mise en abyme, as each source has its own source, in an endless cycle of precipitation.

Artworks are considered primary source materials because they communicate a creative authenticity, a record of a lived moment in time – so the film might stand as a primary source material even if the subject matter can’t be verified as the source.

The film is a photochemical record of the location. It is more too, because the 16mm film negative will be buried on the spot which the lens focused on, for 6 weeks, resulting in a partial decomposition of the image (deleting source material) through contact with the ‘source’. It will be the oxygenation, uv damage and micro-organisms living in that very spot that will be responsible for the decomposition, but is that not source material of a degree further veracity, the previous being only an image, the latter being a material record of the place. Celluloid film, as opposed to digital, is considered indexical, because there is an inherent truth in the fact that light bounced off the pro-filmic object (the spot of ground agreed to be the source of the river) and chemically changed the film frame – as such it is an index of reality. Digital video, with its translation of the same phenomenon into data that is distributed to a matrix of pixels, cannot make the same claim. It is an old theory, suggested by Andre Bazin, a French film critic in the 1950’s predominantly. It feels interesting here because of the notions of source material under investigation.

Submerged Film Reel

I would shoot 400′ of 16mm colour negative, at the source of the river Tweed, or the source of a nearer river to you, if that made sense. That would be processed and printed, and the print sent back up to you to bury. After this time, the print should be exhumed, dried very carefully, and then either run through the projector if it is stable, or I would have an interneg and a print made at the Star and Shadow Cinema, with the help of Mat Fleming. This print would, if projected at 24fps, last approx 11mins. For the processing of the print, it occurred to me that the chemistry required could all be made up using water from the same location, including rinse water. This plays too on the ritualistic quality of the project – burying and exhuming film for the purposes of a quasi-scientific project is kind of a clash of ideologies – the mystical or the ritualistic.

The resulting film would I expect be full of cracks, mould formations, and other signs of decomposition, showing layers of contrast that will be unexpected. It could be creatively projected in relationship to the choreography. (Christo Wallers)

So that’s what we are doing.

Christo went to find the source on February 4th.

Dispatches from the Source

He returned with film documentation, several litres of Tweed Water and a china figurine of a lady with a parasol that he found lying on the ground.

I returned the developed film to the source on February 21st.

I also came back with Tweed Water but for a different purpose. Neil Manning, the farmer who works that land, tells me that it is the best water to add to whisky.

I’ll return in April to find the film and pass it on to Christo for the final process. In the meanwhile I left a note in case anyone came across it .

Thanks to Neil Manning, farmer at Tweedshaws for permission to bury the film.

Claire Pençak

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As part of a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary project awarded to choreographer Claire Pencak, she went with her collaborators, dancers Merav Israel and Tim Rubidge to find the source of Tweed on June 3rd 2014.

This was a journey towards the beginning of a new piece of choreographic research – Dispatches from the Source. Working with the source of the Tweed as an inspiration, our project is asking questions and exploring ideas thorough improvisation, about source materials in terms of choreography as well as more generally. As one of us remarked, before we see a movement, there are lots of other things that have already happened – so too with rivers.

The first bridge over the Tweed

Here is some source material we gathered – a short field recording. It is the Laverock’s song at the source – in the foreground we hear the Larks and in the background lambs and traffic from the A 701.

The source is an emerging place, fed by deeper source material – groundwater – that is not visible to us and shared by other sources. As the Border rhyme tells us ‘Annan,Tweed and Clyde rise oot the ae hillside‘.

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Another rainy day and the Tweed Rivers will be running high – so here’s some ‘light reading’ to help you to to harness some of that hydro energy .

The Layman’s Guide on how to develop a small hydro site: A handbook prepared for the Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General for Energy by European Small Hydropower Association (ESHA). Download the publication here EU_layman’s_guide_to_small_hydro

An updated guide to the above by the Thematic Network on Small Hydropower (TNSHP) includes the developments in engineering and science that have taken place since the first publication. Download here Updated Guide to Small Hydro

Approaching Choreography is an attempt to articulate a more ecological approach to dance making and choreography through the frames of Placing and Perspective; Pathways Through; Meetings and Points of Contact and Working with Materials and Sites.

It emerged through a series of improvisations and conversations in the Scottish Borders and Northumberland with dancers Merav Israel and Tim Rubidge, environmental artist Kate Foster and writer/researcher Dr. Wallace Heim.

Improvisations, Ettrick Water, May 2014Photo Kate Foster

The idea was produced into a small booklet as part of a collaborative Speculative Ground Project with anthropologists Jen Clarke and Rachel Harkness for the Anthropological Association Decennial Conference, in Edinburgh June 2014.

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I had been wondering if there were other ways of considering how we use land that made it easier for more people to be able to engage with ideas around Land Use and feel able to contribute to debates and consultations around these issues. The Scottish Borders along with Aberdeenshire was selected to develop regional pilot Land Use Strategies which will ultimately inform the revision of the national Land Use Strategy which is to be published in 2016. In the Scottish Border this regional framework was developed through mapping and a series of public consultations to seek the views of communities. I had been to a few of these and found it tricky to know how to engage with it as someone that isn’t a land manager or land owner.

I wondered what might be a choreographic response to thinking about habitat and Land Use?

Current ideas around place-making seemed like a good start and I wanted to think about it from more than just the human perspective as it is an ecological issue.

What emerged out of several days of improvisations beside the Ettrick and Yarrow Waters in the Scottish Borders and the East and West Allen Rivers in Northumberland was the idea of habitat as action places and being a score for improvisation.

What do I mean by score? A score suggests ways to proceed. It is a framework to assist imaginative engagement, a way into improvisation and playful encounters.

Here then are sixty ways that habitat might be considered by the diversity of species that use it –birds, fish, insects, mammals, plants and trees. They suggest potential zones of action – on the ground, under the ground and over ground; on the water, underwater and in the air.

Consider them as a way in to thinking about land use.

Resting Place Feeding Place Reflecting Place

Meeting Place Parting Place Growing Place

Fishing Place Nesting Place Gathering Place

Watering Place Flooding Place Grazing Place

Drowning Place Building Place Crossing Place

Flying Place Exploring Place Swimming Place

Washing Place Hunting Place Waiting Place

Stalking Place Dying Place Passing Place

Seeping Place Learning Place Singing Place

Teaching Place Dancing Place Mating Place

Calling Place Swinging Place Perching Place

Hovering Place Playing Place Sheltering Place

Disputing Place Flowing Place Healing Place

Fighting Place Dividing Place Joining Place

Listening Place Hiding Place Lingering Place

Trysting Place Climbing Place Overhanging Place

Killing Place Digging Place Birthing Place

Flowering Place Falling Place Catching Place

Leaping Place Sowing Place Harvesting Place

Storing Place Burying Place Drying Place

How to use the score.

Cut them up, share them out, read them out.

Explore them through drawing, dancing, mapping and conversation.

Use them as a starting point for writing, photography, music making, walking or quiet contemplation.

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We spent a sunny day last May working on the edge of the Ettrick Water at Philiphaugh, a stone’s throw from the hydro turbines. It was the first few days of a project working with dancers and movement improvisation to explore what an ecological approach to choreography might be.

The collaborators on this were Claire Pençak, choreographer, dancers Merav Israel and Tim Rubidge and environmental artist Kate Foster.

One of the questions that emerged from this process was – How long would it take for a droplet of water to travel from the source to the mouth of Tweed?

This was the fascinating email from Professor Chris Soulsby, Chair in Hydrology, University of Aberdeen in response to our question.

‘What may seem a simple question actually has a very complex answer!

I’ll start simple, for water molecules (water may enter the catchment as rain DROPS, but it’s better to think of the subsequent movement through the landscape as individual molecules) to travel from the source to the mouth of the Tweed RIVER SYSTEM will – as you say – depend on flow rates. In really wet conditions, it would probably take only a day or two. In dry weather, it might be a week or two.

But, water is only in the river for a very short proportion of its overall “residence time” in the Tweed CATCHMENT. Only a tiny (<0.01%) proportion of rain falls on the river channel, most will fall over the catchment land surface. There it may follow a bewilderingly complicated spectrum of possible flow paths to the river channel (depending on where you are geographically and whether it’s wet or dry). At one extreme end of the spectrum, rain may fall on a road surface, rapidly drain down the gutter in to storm drains and get to the river in a matter of minutes. The same rapid transport could happen in mountains if rain falls over bare rock and rapidly runs off in to mountain streams. At the other end of the spectrum it may fall on dry soils and slowly drain into groundwater in the underlying bedrock where (in the sedimentary sandstones in the lower Tweed) it make take decades or centuries to reach the river channel.

So the water in the river channel at any point in time is an integrated collection of water flows from these different sort of flow paths (specialists talk about a rivers “transit time distribution” to acknowledge this. In the winter and during wet periods, the water “age” will be biased to the rapid, short term flow paths and may be an average of several weeks/months old (in other words, most fell as rain in the previous few months). In summer low flows, the water in the river will be dominated from deeper groundwater contributions and might be – on average – decades old. But, these “ages” are averages of water that has a spectrum of ages. So, almost at any time SOME of the water in the river will have fallen in the past few months and SOME will have fallen before – say – the Battle of Flodden. The relative proportions shift depending upon how wet the weather is (when its wet the water is on average younger, as it dries the water is older).

In other words the water in the river is not only integrating everything that has happened over the large area of the catchment, but (to get back to your question) it’s integrating through history. That’s why protection of water is so important; for example agricultural or industrial pollutants input into the catchment today, may still be draining into the river in hundreds of years’ time!

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research platform which brings together academic research on arts projects which use mapping and mapping methodologies to collate, question or investigate notions of place and space, with a focus on mapping projects charting climate change.